Sunday, August 01, 2004

Stereotypical Willy Nillys

I was looking at a glass of water the other day when my nephew came over and grabbed it from in front of my face. He was doing an experiment on Browning Movement and wanted the water. For you that don’t know, this experiment consists of taking some slowly dissolving blue colored crystals, putting them into a glass and then adding some water in order to see what happens when the crystals dissolve. The result is that the dissolving crystals will totally mix with the water over time and the mixture will be totally blue. It got me to thinking about stereotyping which is getting everyone hot and bothered in my ‘ hood. Everyone wants to be an individual which is okay by me. The fun starts because each of us has a natural curiosity as to why people do things or why events happen as in Life, Relationships, and Shit. None of us can read minds and ½ the time we haven’t got a clue why we do things as individuals. If pressed, we all can come up with a passable reason as to why we did something stupid. The blue dissolving crystals in the glass are something like us in real life. Each blue crystal is darting randomly here and there at all possible speed without any concrete objective as in the Willy Nilly Syndrome. If we don’t know what each individual is doing or where they are located at any particular time we can analyze them statistically. We know that as a group, the atoms of blue crystal will disperse although we don’t know what path each one will follow nor what they will be thinking about during the process. Same with us. If you sit in a park and watch people, each person is rushing around like Willy Nillys yet none of us have a reliable clue as to what the Willy Nillys are thinking in specific terms. We can make statistical guesses for the group as a whole as far as characteristics, attitude, occupations, economic status, potential etc. are concerned but nothing for a specific individual. It seems that our brain is wired for patterns, but hasn’t a clue about individuals as an exception unless we get to know them on a personal level. Kind of ironic don’t your think??? Everyone wants to be treated as an individual but we are all wired for patterns. Perhaps God has a sense of humor after all!!!